Hello Goatrunner Gojo Fans!

The new FIRST LEGO League season is officially here. This year's challenge is BIOGLOW — biodiversity, ecosystems, and how technology can help us understand and protect the natural world. FIRST released the BIOGLOW specifics on August 4!

See what the robots will be doing this year:

BIOGLOW Challenge Overview

Robot Game Missions

Season Video

This is also the final FIRST LEGO League season in its current form — which makes it a season worth showing up for. One more run at the table.

We are beginning our 5th steamHouse robotics season!!

There are changes afoot for FIRST LEGO League (NEXT year), and changes for steamHouse (NOW) but the Goatrunners will run largely as we have!

Our coaches all volunteer their time. high attendance, and perspective on life, team and reflective skills are still with us!

One change we expect: more of our teams may also pursue the Innovation Project! This, along with the Core Values, Robot Design and Robot Game portions we’ve participated in before, make a team eligible for the State Tournament….that is, if that competition crew’s composite score at the November Qualifier places them in the top 25% of that tournament!

Showing Up Is the Plan

One expectation we name before the season, not during it: we ask for 90+% attendance.

Everything a crew does is team decision-making — what to build, what to try, what to research, how to present it. Those decisions are hard to hold together when people are missing. A kid who's there 60% of the time costs the crew more than four-tenths of a kid: work the crew already did together has to be re-explained, re-decided, or paused.

So attendance here isn't a rule about robots — it's how kids learn that a team can count on them. When you register, you're saying yes to Sundays. Life happens, and we get it — just know this is the standard, and it's one of the most valuable things the season teaches.

Robot Kits Are Coming — First Dibs on Assembly

Robot game kits arrive soon, and every season starts the same way: somebody gets to build the mission models!

Kit assembly is honestly one of the best parts of the pre-season — real hands-on time with the hardware before the missions even start. And this year, assembly spots go to the first families who register. Sign up early, build early.

How to Register

Email Brenton — that's it.

Include your kid's name and grade. You're on the roster, and if you're early, you're on the assembly crew.

Register: brenton@steamhouse.club

Sunday, August 23. See you at kickoff.

How to Pay

Once you've registered, the season fee is $120, sliding scale — and you can pay it right on our site.

Pay the Season Fee

Sliding scale means exactly that: pay what works for your family. Questions about it? Just ask when you register — no forms, no proof, no awkwardness.

Get the Robot Report in Your Inbox

How We Pick Our Names

Here's a true story from last season. When it came time to name the team, the vote came down to two choices — and it got tight. People weren't just passionate about their favorite. They were passionately against the other one. We got a name, but we didn't quite get a team out of the naming.

That experience went straight into the Team Playbook — the steamHouse lesson set for turning team moments into growth. Lesson 2 is called Choosing Our Name, and its core idea is simple:

If the purpose of naming is unity, the process should create unity.

So this season, crew names get picked by ranked choice: everyone ranks all the options instead of picking one favorite. The name that wins is the one the whole crew can stand behind — not just the one that beat the other one. It's a small change. It's also exactly the kind of thing this team is really about.

Because here's the not-so-secret secret: the robot is the medium; the team is the point. The kids who leave this season with something real won't just have driven a robot — they'll have planned together, argued well about engineering choices, recovered from setbacks together, and presented their work to a room of adults. That's the build we care about most.